NUMERICAL STUDY ON THE ROLE OF VORTICAL AND DIVERGENT COMPONENTS OF WIND STRESS IN ENSO CYCLE

The 1960-1991 monthly mean FSU (Florida State University)wind stress data aredecomposed into a vortical and a divergent component with each of which to force the model oceanin the context of a two-layer tropical Pacific model.Evidence suggests that for the seasonalvariation the ocean forcing does not produce a realistic cold tongue using either of the componentsand the tongue will not be effectively improved in its intensity and pattern even if the componentsare doubled or halved:the utilization of climatic mean wind stress(no decomposition is done of thewind stress)that contains its seasonal variation will lead to a realistic SST distribution on which isimposed,separately,the interannual anomalies of each of the components so as to get the SSTApattern:under the action of the interannual anomaly of the vortical(divergent)component therearises qnite intense SSTA oscillation marked by noticeable ENSO periods(feeble SSTA withhigher oscillation frequency for obscure ENSO periods),thereby illustrating that the roles of thetwo components differ from each other in the genesis of SST variation on a seasonal and aninterannual basis such that a realistic cold tongue pattern follows under the joint effects on themodel ocean of the two components of wind stress while rational E1 Nino/La Nina phenomenaresult under the forcing of an anomalous wind stress vortical component.Moreover,the divergentcomponent is innegligible in generating a mean climatic condition of the ocean sector but of lessimportance compared to the vortical component in ENSO development.